LESSONS FROM A DISASTER

CLASSROOM

BRIDGES COLLAPSE,. Buildings fall. Motors jam. Accepting and understanding failure - and importantly learning its lessons -are a major part of engineering. Indeed, Lchigh University has a senior-level undergraduate course called "Failure Analysis," which makes use of the school's leadership in electron and light optical microscopy. Students study specimens of materials from real failures: parts of machines or buildings. This year's class of 14, however, will be investigating pieces of the Space Shuttle Columbia, which disintegrated upon reentry over the skies of east Texas in January 2003. The tragedy, which killed all seven astronauts on board, scattered debris across a wide area, but some 84,000 pieces were recovered. Now, 50 of those mangled pieces are under study at Lchigh. The Pennsylvania school is the first university to receive Columbia debris for study from NASA. Arnold Marder, the professor of materials science and engineering who heads the class, got Lehigh involved last spring when he spent a sabbatical at NASA's Kennedy Space Center.

"I thought that having our students work on parts of the failed Columbia shuttle would be a perfect way to accomplish the goals of the course while giving our students a real-world application," Marder says. NASA agreed.

Among the parts received by Lehigh are windshield glass, ceramic thermal protection tiles, and reinforced carbon carbon composite (RCC) from the wing's leading edge. The students will be looking for how the materials reacted to hypersonic re-entry. Although the students are just learning this technology, they'll be keenly supervised by Marder and two others, including Arlan Benscoter, a world-class microscopist. And they can also consult with other materials faculty experts.

Says Scott Thurston, who was Columbia's vehicle manager: "NASA would hope that data (from Lehigh) would help us design a better spacecraft." That's certainly Marder's goal, as well. "We are very hopeful," he says, "that we can make a contribution to the future of space flight." -TG

Copyright American Society for Engineering Education Summer 2005
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